


On Spriggans

by nostalgic_breton_girl



Category: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Bloodmoon, Gen, Raven Rock, Solstheim, spriggans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22893358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgic_breton_girl/pseuds/nostalgic_breton_girl
Summary: A profound interest in the nature of Spriggans led me to Solstheim, one of their principal haunts, to question the locals about these mysterious creatures. These are my notes on the matter, to be collected later into a report for the Guild of Mages.
Kudos: 4





	On Spriggans

To invoke the wrath of Kynareth is perhaps the most dangerous thing of all: other gods, perhaps you can win with enough cunning, but who can win against Nature herself? That is why I was most severely warned against my research mission; the prospect of almost untouched scholarship held me on course, however, and I went to Solstheim despite everything, to investigate the legends of the Spriggans that had so intrigued me.

  
We do not get Spriggans on Vvardenfell, for reasons quite unknown. They are sporadic elsewhere in Tamriel: but it was said that the Skaal of Solstheim were particularly knowledgeable about the creatures with which they shared space, and so I determined to begin my research there.

  
My first stop was Fort Frostmoth, the recently established Imperial base, where any questions about Spriggans were answered with directions to Raven Rock. While some of the soldiers claimed to have seen Spriggans, the only person who might have given me a more detailed account had apparently met an unfortunate death by one - the only signs of such a death being the unearthly screeches that had been heard even up at the fort, and later the discovery of his body, covered in hideous irregular lacerations that no human blade may produce. 

  
And so to Raven Rock, the little settlement founded on ebony mining, on the west coast of the island. The man in charge there is a certain Falco Galenus, who along with several of his workers and guards had recently fended off a Spriggan attack. They admitted to realising that they had encroached on dangerous territory, when they had begun to clear the forest to expand the settlement, but their masterful defeat of the Spriggans meant that they were little discouraged from the continuation of their plan.   
I asked Falco what he had experienced of the Spriggans, and he told me this:

  
‘Certainly it is wise to trust the warnings that they may be mistaken for trees. Imagine a young sapling, all lanky branches and green bark, one that your eye would skim over, if you walked past it without truly looking. Even in the midst of battle, some of them froze, and became absolutely inert, and in this state some kind of magic must have been involved, because we could scarcely land a cut on them, as if we were trying to fell a tree with a butter-knife. 

  
‘But we persisted: as you might imagine, they were particularly susceptible to fire, and as luck would have it we had a few enchanted blades lying about the place. We countered their attacks, not without difficulty, but we managed to damage them, and they began to fall to our efforts.

  
‘But the legend is that Spriggans die three deaths. You have heard that, no doubt, and it is very much true. When the first Spriggan fell, we were overjoyed, we knew we could defeat them, and easily - and then it came back to life, and if anything, stronger than before. This was repeated when this second incarnation died. Some of the men thought they would be there for all eternity, but I assured them that after the third death they should be well and truly gone: and thankfully I and the legends were right. 

  
‘Certainly it was not a simple task. There were four Spriggans, and ten of us, but between the four Spriggans were twelve lives. Nevertheless we did destroy them, and since then there has been no sign of any more. The remains - I suppose one might call them corpses: they did take on a remarkably animalistic appearance, in death - were left on the forest floor, but after a day they were gone without a trace. The gods only know what might have become of them. It is to be hoped that we showed some level of threat, and they won’t be back.

  
‘I should say that some of the men were injured, though it wasn’t badly. We’ve all heard the stories of the soldier at Frostmoth. It’s widely believed he was drunk and badly armoured. Spriggans can pack a punch, certainly: their fingers are sharper even than they look. We’re lucky, I think, that they didn’t call all of nature to their aid, as has been rumoured. But we have a few decent healers here, so no lasting harm was done.’

  
On asking the East Empire Company’s Factor about the Raven Rock site, I had been told that Falco Galenus was prone to spouting ‘optimistic drivel’, and I was somewhat concerned that the effects might have been a little worse than he implied. However, I must here say that on this occasion he was very much correct: those men who had been injured, had been injured only lightly, and if the site were again threatened by Spriggans, they would not go gladly to battle exactly, but it would not be with any sensation of dread. 

  
The surprising ease with which they had conquered this threat astounded me a little, knowing the legends, and the supposedly direct connexion with the goddess Kynareth herself. I told Falco Galenus about my intentions to cross the island, over to the Skaal residence, and he told me that I might wish to be diligent, for not only was the journey a dangerous one - there was a reason the forest was being cleared at Raven Rock, and it was principally to build a wall, to keep the forest creatures out - but the Skaal, while peaceful, seemed ill-disposed towards the Raven Rock and Frostmoth settlements, which I should try not to mention, and I should also take a gift or two to offer them.

  
I journeyed, therefore, to the Skaal village, in the north-east of the island: it was a difficult trek, for even in summer Solstheim is wracked with opaque blizzards, and though I went cautiously and well-armed, I did nearly come to grief on one occasion, having run unexpectedly into a pack of wolves. But at last I saw the wooden buildings emerge from the snow, and knew that I was safe, for my return to Frostmoth would be executed with an Intervention spell, and I should not have to make the island-crossing again.

  
I will not recount here much of what I observed and learnt among the Skaal, as that would fill another few volumes, and may well do, should I ever brave the thankless task of sifting through endless notes, transcribed in an increasingly frozen hand. I will say only what I learnt among the Skaal on the topic of Spriggans, which is this, recounted by the shaman Korst Wind-Eye, who even before receiving his gift was much delighted at the prospect of telling me about Nature, and Solstheim, and the All-Maker.

  
‘Spriggans,’ said he, ‘are the tree-spirits of Solstheim. When the All-Maker breathed life into the creatures of the land, his breath blew through the trees as well, and some trees kept a part of this life.’

  
‘Then they are truly living trees,’ said I. 

  
‘As living as any other creature of the land, and deserving of the same appellation and respect,’ he replied. ‘Have you before now experienced the wrath of these creatures?’

  
‘I have not,’ said I.

  
‘And nor will you, if you should respect the land, and all within it, and the All-Maker himself: they are as any other animal. We Skaal use only what we need from the land, and as Spriggans do not provide us with any material we could not do without, we do not bother them, and so they do not bother us.’

  
‘Alchemists swear by the important properties of their sap and their taproot,’ I put in.

  
‘No doubt they do, in such a country as yours, where science is revered beyond all practical use, and poisons are venerated as much as potions.’

  
‘In my country,’ said I, ‘in the Cult, rather, of the Nine Divines, Spriggans are seen as a creature of Kynareth, and sometimes as embodying Her wrath. Do you see them as an embodiment of the wrath of the All-Maker, or -?’

  
‘Are not all animals similarly disposed, that they attack when threatened?’ he returned: ‘and are not humans, and elves, among them? Life is a gift of the All-Maker, and where it is not respected, there are consequences. That is the basis of Oneness, of our harmony with the land.’

  
At this point, I had found a topic he was more than eager to discuss, and the rest of our conversation that evening was based on this idea of Oneness. It was several days later when I at last left the Skaal, with my notebooks filled to bursting, and my mind philosophising beyond reason, so that when I began the walk back to Frostmoth, I apparently did not recall that such a thing as Divine Intervention existed.

  
I was brought back to myself a short way south of the settlement, a little way off the shores of Lake Fjalding, when I heard the most gods-awful screech, and suddenly remembered what I had heard about Spriggans, back at Frostmoth. Gods! - it had sounded close by. My first thought perhaps should have been for the spell I had intended to use, to take me immediately back to the fort, but I am a scholar, and this was but my second, the first being for the opportunity to see one of my academic subjects in the wild. I was perhaps foolish, but I considered myself well-armoured and well-armed, and so I went very carefully in the direction of the noise.

  
Thank the gods that I saw them before they saw me! I had almost a minute of fine observation, of no fewer than five Spriggans. Falco Galenus had been right: they were like saplings, sprightly young trees that might have been easily mistaken for inanimate, were you not looking for signs of life. But among their twisting branches were the forms of arms, and of legs, a bizarre humanoid: and when I got close enough to perceive what might have been their heads, I was astounded to discover a rather convincing female face, as if it had been carved from the wood by a skilled sculptor. Indeed, once I had noticed this, I could not but see them as women, their forms delicately curved - indeed the very face as one which I thought I recognised, as the face of Kynareth, which I had seen so often in the chapel windows back home. Divines! but they were beautiful…

  
I was enraptured, for all of a minute, until I heard a sound, not from among the Spriggans, but from behind me, and was apprehended by what was in comparison - and indeed generally - the most ugly little creature I had ever seen. It attacked with much gusto, and to my horror I saw the Spriggans began to move, when they noticed the commencing fight. But I put down this little being, which I later learnt to be a Riekling, and when it was dead, I looked back at the Spriggans, and saw them staring at me - staring at me almost in awe, and then, with another glance towards the dead Riekling, they fled into the depths of the forest.

  
What do I believe happened? I believe the Riekling had the Spriggans somehow enthralled, and when I destroyed their captor, they were liberated from its servitude. I have since read a similar account of the Falmer holding a Spriggan captive in such a way. The notion that Spriggans may be held captive may seem unbelievable to those who think of them as Kynareth’s wrath, as the embodiment of Her immense power: along with the idea that they are, if not easily, at least capable of being destroyed by human effort. But take them as a forest-creature, sharing their spark of life with those animals that surround them, and one sees them differently, as creatures, as beings with as much free will as any other, and with as much capacity for this free will to be taken by another. 

  
No doubt I shall have to write my notes into a more coherent account. But there is one more thing I must add, which concerns the threefold deaths of Spriggans. This I inquired about on returning to the Imperial Shrine at Frostmoth, of the priest there, Jeleen by name, who told me the following:

  
‘The three deaths of Spriggans symbolise the element of wrath in their existence. While I am not certain I believe every element of this theory, I will gladly tell you the details.’

  
‘The Skaal do not believe at all that they exist as a means of wrath,’ I put in.

  
‘That is their business and belief, and they may have it, but the idea is more complicated than their entire existence being for that purpose. The first death of a Spriggan may well be accidental - caused by a mistake on the part of a human or elf, or by some accident of nature. Their reincarnation after this is allegedly in the assumption that there was some mistake, and if one distances oneself from the Spriggan after she has been felled for the first time, then she will not persist in her attacks, unless she perceives that you have the intent to continue.’

  
‘And the second death?’ said I.

  
‘That is where the notion of wrath comes in. The second incarnation is the one which comes from ire. One may kill a Spriggan by mistake, the first time: the second is no accident. She is reincarnated stronger than before, as an attempt at deterrence. If one persists, one will either be punished with death, or with the third and final death of the Spriggan.’

  
‘Survival is hardly a punishment.’

  
‘Oh! that is a simple way of seeing things. To anger Kynareth is not to anger any ordinary being: Her wrath is not purely destruction. Nature works in greater ways than that, and if one is so persistent as to destroy Her creatures in such a way, then it is more effective, surely, to let one live and suffer the consequences, than to give one the quick unseeing release of death.’

  
‘Then you do not think we should harm any animal?’

  
‘That is not quite the theory, and it is not what I personally believe. You have been among the Skaal, I hear, who hunt only for subsistence, and do not harm the land, if it is beyond what they need to survive. That does not mean that they may not hunt, or use Nature to their purposes, but only that they must be careful and respectful. A similar philosophy exists among some followers of Kynareth. One may hunt a bear, if one wishes to have the pelt for one’s bed, and the meat for one’s dinner; but if one merely wishes the head as a trophy, and the story as a fireside boast, then that is quite another matter. And if nothing else, as far as I am aware, Spriggans provide neither pelts nor meat, and I would say myself that to willingly hunt them is likely out of fear or misunderstanding, or sheer bravado.’

  
‘Or a devotion to alchemy,’ I added.

  
‘Quite. Quite. Personally I think you’re going a bit too far, if you are so determined to find rare ingredients that you ignore the fact that their effects may be perfectly well extracted from a common mushroom, but I shan’t judge, at this present moment.’

  
Our conversation upon the nature of Spriggans lulled, and I retired at length to a bed that had been prepared for me, still thinking over the matter. I will admit now that, after returning to Frostmoth, my intention had been to venture a short way into the forest, with the safety of the fort behind me, and try to find a Spriggan, and if necessary tangle with it: but all that I had heard rather deterred me from it. I must also admit that my voyage to Solstheim had not been purely for research purposes. The alchemist Ajira back in Balmora awaited me with the full expectation that I would return with a good stock of Spriggan sap and taproots. But she would have to find someone else to do her work for her, or else extract the same effects from a common mushroom, because Divines! I had been given much to think about.

  
I still do not think I shall ever be certain of the nature of Spriggans. My current report must focus only on the scribblings which produced this piece of writing, which for lack of more I must conclude here. Much as I would like to persist, on another occasion - perhaps in the warmer climes of Cyrodiil - I am inclined to leave Spriggans well alone. I do not know if I would or would not be attacked, were I to approach one; I do not wish to find out. I do not know if in approaching one, I would incur the wrath of Kynareth, or of the All-Maker, or just a bloodthirsty tree creature, and no matter how strong one’s scholarly interests, I think you would agree that none of those is an entirely attractive prospect.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this is headcanon, in particular the section about the three deaths. The majority draws on general Elder Scrolls lore concerning Spriggans, and develops it. The first line from Korst Wind-Eye is lifted almost verbatim from Bloodmoon.


End file.
